Person
Rabbi Nechemya רבי נחמיה
the Tanna whose voice speaks in the Tosefta
Rabbi Nechemya belonged to the generation that raised the Torah after Hadrian; at Usha he sat beside Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehuda. As the anonymous Mishnah stands on Rabbi Meir, so the Tosefta stands on him: "an unattributed Tosefta is Rabbi Nechemya" (Sanhedrin 86a). Whatever it says without a name is his voice, checked by the tradition of his school.
To him is also ascribed the Mishnat haMiddot, the oldest Hebrew work of geometry; whether so or not, exactness of measure is his hand in halakhah too.
The sources give no years of life; the window of activity is set by generation, following Aharon Hyman's Toldot Tannaim ve-Amoraim.
On the timeline
3978 · 218 CEThe End of the Tannaitic Era: Tosefta and Baraitot3900 · 140 CEThe Assembly at Usha and the Restoration of the Sanhedrin
Related
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Sanhedrin 86a — «an unattributed Tosefta is Rabbi Nechemya»
Rishonim
- Seder Tannaim ve-Amoraim — the list of the sages by generation, put together about 884
Basis: Talmud and midrash.